Time for all of my appliances to die?

I love, love, love my front loader washer -- except when it decides that it doesn't like a certain task like the wash cycle. Or the spin cycle. Or any combination thereof. Not being handy with fixing things, we went ahead and bought the extended warranties on our appliances. The washer would stop working, and we'd call for a repair. With no laundry in it, it would run fine. Now the warranty's out and I've been playing with the same load of laundry for a week. Not a good thing in my house.

The week before Christmas my microwave decided to just stop. When we bought it a few years back, I know that it only cost about $50 (we'd had to replace it because my oldest ds put a mini (individual sized) bag of popcorn in on the regular popcorn timer and we could not get the smell out). I didn't get the warranty because it didn't make any sense to pay what a new one would cost to get the coverage. We've done pretty well without it, but I did start to see that I was more likely to do a drive through run if I knew that I didn't have anything defrosted. With the 6 of us, 5 drive through runs will pay for a microwave.

I looked them up and checked some out at Wmart when I was picking up the stuff to make a Shadow the Hedgehog cake. We can't fit our glass dishes into the smallest ones, and I don't need a high end one because it's basically to speed up dinner prep for me/frozen diet meals or snacks for the kids. So for a couple of dollars (literally) more, I can get the stainless steel with a super easy to open door or save a few bucks and have the kids struggle with the door. Luckily, I just saw that Target has the one that I wanted (the Emerson stainless) on sale this week for $55.

My hardworking dishwasher has had a leak FOREVER. While it was under warranty, they came and checked it out and couldn't/didn't fix it. It's portable, so we just use a towel on the floor and move it back into place. I asked for it when I was pregnant with ds #2 and I'm so glad that I did. The NICU nurses noticed how chapped my hands were from scrubbing and boiling the medela parts and shared that the dishwasher could sterilize the stuff just fine! If it was good enough for the NICU, then it's good enough for me. But that was 10 years ago, so our radar is up for a replacement in the near future.